Elizabeth Warren puts breaking up Big Tech on the 2020 election agenda

Image: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Now this is what we call a power move.

Elizabeth Warren published a blog post on Medium that matter of factly stated that it’s time to break up three of the most powerful companies in the country.

That’s right: Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Facebook, Google, and Amazon. And she’s got a plan to do it.

There have been increasing calls in the press, government, and legal worlds that our current tech giants constitute monopolies the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Gilded Age, and that we need to give them the Gilded Age treatment. But Warren’s post, and speech that she delivered in Queens (sorry, Bezos), turn that idea into an actual mainstream plan of attack.

The consequence of the post — in addition to laying out a pretty badass plan for promoting increased competition and accountability in tech — is that Warren just made breaking up Big Tech a Big Issue for the 2020 democratic primaries, and potentially even 2020 presidential election.

Now that Warren has made this a major point of her campaign, all of her competitors are going to have to weigh in on whether Facebook, Google, and Amazon are monopolies, and what the heck to do about it. What will Kamala say? Bernie? Will Biden — BFF of tech-friendly Obama — take a more lenient stand? And, good lord, what the heck will Trump have to say about this?

Make no mistake: this is tech’s worst nightmare. Taking the conversation of whether these companies have gotten too powerful center stage, and putting anti-trust regulation on the Dems’ to-do list, is not something these companies want. 

The tech industry has supported liberal candidates and causes in the past. But part of the irony of big tech is that it maintains that it is trying to do good for the world — even as its tentacles grow ever longer, and its power results in the consolidation of power and wealth in the hands of a few. “We’re good guys, we swear! We would have voted for Obama a third time if we could!” tech seems to say. And good guys don’t get busted up in anti-trust regulations, right?

It’s a long road to the 2020 elections, and nobody knows what the next — oh cripes, almost two years?! — has in store for us. But what we do know now is that regulating and breaking up Big Tech is officially on the table. Let the debates, and maybe, eventually, action, begin.